Our Hungarian friends are once again holding the 24 Hour Puzzle Championship in Budapest on the weekend of the 28th - 30th April, 2017. The day after the event is a bank holiday so more time to recover either at home or by taking in the sights of the beautiful city of Budapest.
Over the past few years there has been a group of competitors taking part from the UK and the reigning champion is UK's Neil Zussman.
Entrants normally arrive at the hotel on the Friday evening, attend the question time to clarify issues regarding puzzles and then start solving from 10am on Saturday morning through to 10 am on Sunday morning.
Whether you're vying to take the trophy from Neil or just want to have some fun then it's a great competition.
If interested in the 24 Hour Championship please contact Gyorgy Istvan - istvan.gyorgy@gmail.com

Of course you can get some extra practice in by attending the UKPA Open Tournament at the end of February where there are still some places available. Please see the Announcement thread for information about the UKPA Open Tournaments.

I'd love to go, but there's the basic issue of not being able to get there in time - certainly can't get to Budapest until midnight-ish on the Friday, which probably won't have me best prepared for the twenty four hours to follow... A real shame as I've heard such great things about this competition. Hope everyone who goes enjoys themselves.

Just booked my flights, you can currently get a return journey from London, Thursday to Sunday, for under £130, so there's no excuse for anyone even remotely tempted, at least not for those near London- it's a lot more fun than it may sound!
In other words- Tom, get yourself organised.

There's a chance of me being able to go this year.
Is anyone interested in those Hungarian escape rooms on Friday?
If there's a group going I hope to tag along and book my flights accordingly.
Hopefully, they have different rooms set up by now.

tamz29 wrote:There's a chance of me being able to go this year.
Is anyone interested in those Hungarian escape rooms on Friday?
If there's a group going I hope to tag along and book my flights accordingly.
Hopefully, they have different rooms set up by now.

I'm certainly planning to do one or more escape rooms. For each of the last few years, I've spent the Friday before the competition doing that, with a variety of companions (usually Tom C and Rob V as a minimum) and I'm sure Gyorgy would be able to help find ones we haven't done. So hopefully you'll manage to join us this year.

I've asked Gyorgy if he can book a couple of Escape rooms for us for Friday, as he has done in the past. So far I believe there are 3 people interested, Tom, Tawan and me, but anyone else is welcome to join.

Thanks to everyone involved with the 24hr Championship - organisers, marking team, puzzle authors, testers etc. As usual I had a great time.
My flight wasn't due to leave until 20:35 but I managed to stay awake in the airport - was asleep on the plane before they shut the doors. Thought I was going to have a good night last night - but cramp in my calf put pay to that!
Anyway, as usual the competition was well organised and even though a number of the "regulars" weren't there they had the best ever entry (with perhaps the exception of the one in 2005 after the WPC in Eger the first time). Notable "newbies" included Ken Endo (Japan), Prasanna and Ashish (India) and Tawan (Thailand) returned so no excuses for those that are more local to come along and enjoy themselves. Prasanna pointed out that our flights from the UK (approx. 2 1/2 hours) were shorter than his taxi ride to the airport.
The overall winner was Ken Endo who successfully completed 4 of the 13 rounds within the 100 minutes (I think on one he said he had 40? minutes to spare - I may have misheard that).
The organisers had arranged special awards for anyone who managed to beat Ken in any of the rounds - Neil achieved that twice and tied with him once and three others also managed to beat him: Nikola, Prasanna and Michael Mosshammer.
Neil was in 2nd and Nikola 3rd.
My lowest round score was just 100/1000 but the best in that round was just 525 (definitely a hard round) and my best was 535 and surprisingly that wasn't a round that Ken managed to finish.
Zoltan Horvath had created a large puzzle for us all to solve (as though we hadn't solved enough puzzles) - and a few had a go at that before they left with Tom and Ken making good progress before Tom left, leaving Neil to take his place. It gave us something to do whilst waiting for our buses back to the airport.

A great weekend as always, even if one of the two escape rooms we did on Friday was a bit of a dud. The other "white room" one was pretty awesome. Neil did very well to claim the title of top NZ and top non-Ken - taking two rounds off of Ken in the process.

Puzzles will likely be shared when the authors have given Gyorgy permission to do so. Given that they are usually released, I can't see why they wouldn't be this time as well, eventually.

Given the efforts of Ashish, Prasanna, Tawan and Ken, perhaps we'll be seeing you in Budapest one of these years James?